Bloodpact Blogging and the Consultative Paradigm
So I’ve made a commitment with some of my closest friends to blog once every couple of days for the next month in our ongoing crusade of sorts to consistently blog. It started with once a day for a week, then turned into this with a biweekly check-in. Though I have a nutty month coming up I think the purpose is that its not that hard to write a couple of paragraphs at night and share what you’re thinking, what you’ve learning, what you’re musing on. So here it is to bloodpact blogging!
One of the themes that’s come up frequently recently is the practice that Baha’is refer to as consultation. Its the community’s mechanism of collectively seeking truth and finding consensus. In consultation you don’t own your contributions per se, but rather once you share your perspective on the matter of hand that perspective belongs to the consulting group. We try to maintain both a frank as well as a loving atmosphere and the goal is at all times to put truth before our current thinking. As such it is my understanding that you act upon the consultation just as much as the consultation acts upon you. You might be informed as deeply by the consultation as you are informing it, and often may find yourself in the position of changing your opinion on a matter a number of times during the course of the consultation.
I’ve also experienced in the work we’re doing with HEG a collective phase transition or paradigm shift in the way that we’ve been thinking of things. This has led me to put a lot of thought in how to create structures that not only are capable of change but rather organizations that encourage change — fundamental change — on a regular basis and perhaps driven by reflection on action taken thus far. Recently a friend and close collaborator of mine shared the idea with me that is extremely profound. He said that he felt that consultation is the tool that can free us of paradigms. The idea that progress doesn’t have to be bound by these phases where we have to have a transition to a higher phase of understanding, but that progress would be seamless is something that deeply intrigues me, both individually as well as organizationally. If you truly embark on a consultative approach to truth then you don’t need a paradigm shift, because you’re engaged in ever-advancing progress.
Right…keep your blogs short Toddi, that way you’ll do it every couple of days. 
Tags: Baha'i, blogging, consultation, HEG, organizations
November 12th, 2009 at 1:23 pm
Love this, Todd. I’ve sort of blamed my Baha’í upbringing for leaving me hopelessly wishy-washy in any debate because I find something to agree with in every position, but it’s interesting to think of this not as a lack of commitment to the truth so much as a refusal to get entrenched. I hadn’t thought of a paradigm as an entrenched position until I read this, but I think it is. And what often makes it so hard sometimes to get to real consultation is that among all the different sorts of detachment we need to practice is a detachment from the paradigms we’ve slipped into unconsciously.
Thanks for this, I am excited to think I might see regular blog posts from you and get regular glimpses into what you’re thinking.
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